Leading British Conductor Sir Neville Marriner Dies at 92

The British conductor and violinist, Sir Neville Marriner, has died at the age of 92, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields says.

Sir Neville started his musical career with the London Symphony Orchestra. He later established the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, one of the world's leading chamber orchestras. Its chairman, Paul Aylieff, said Sir Neville's artistic and recording legacy with orchestras and audiences worldwide was "immense".

"He will be greatly missed by all who knew and worked with him and the academy will ensure it continues to be an excellent and fitting testament to Sir Neville," Mr Aylieff added.A statement from the academy said its founder had passed away peacefully in the early hours of Sunday.

Born in Lincoln in 1924, Sir Neville studied at the Royal College of Music and the Paris Conservatoire.

He first played in a string quartet, then in the London Symphony Orchestra, during which time he decided to form a chamber ensemble from London's finest players.

A group of friends began rehearsing in Sir Neville's front room, before taking their name from the London church of St Martin in the Fields where they staged their first performance in 1959. The academy, which Sir Neville became life president of, says it now has one of the largest collections of recordings of any chamber orchestra in the world.

Sir Neville has been widely honoured for his work which includes recording the soundtrack for the 1984 film, Amadeus, and becoming the oldest conductor to lead at the Proms, in 2014 at the age of 90. In March, he was made a Companion of Honour by the Duke of Cambridge at Buckingham Palace, and has also been honoured in France, Germany and Sweden.

No comments:

Post a Comment

John J. Puccio

About the Author

Understand, I'm just an everyday guy reacting to something I love. And I've been doing it for a very long time, my appreciation for classical music starting with the musical excerpts on The Big John and Sparkie radio show in the early Fifties and the purchase of my first recording, The 101 Strings Play the Classics, around 1956. In the late Sixties I began teaching high school English and Film Studies as well as becoming interested in hi-fi, my audio ambitions graduating me from a pair of AR-3 speakers to the Fulton J's recommended by The Stereophile's J. Gordon Holt. In the early Seventies, I began writing for a number of audio magazines, including Audio Excellence, Audio Forum, The Boston Audio Society Speaker, The American Record Guide, and from 1976 until 2008, The $ensible Sound, for which I served as Classical Music Editor.

Today, I'm retired from teaching and use a pair of bi-amped VMPS RM40s loudspeakers for my listening. In addition to writing the Classical Candor blog, I served as the Movie Review Editor for the Web site Movie Metropolis (formerly DVDTown) from 1997-2013. Music and movies. Life couldn't be better.

Mission Statement

It is the goal of Classical Candor to promote the enjoyment of classical music. Other forms of music come and go--minuets, waltzes, ragtime, blues, jazz, bebop, country-western, rock-'n'-roll, heavy metal, rap, and the rest--but classical music has been around for hundreds of years and will continue to be around for hundreds more. It's no accident that every major city in the world has one or more symphony orchestras.

When I was young, I heard it said that only intellectuals could appreciate classical music, that it required dedicated concentration to appreciate. Nonsense. I'm no intellectual, and I've always loved classical music. Anyone who's ever seen and enjoyed Disney's Fantasia or a Looney Tunes cartoon playing Rossini's William Tell Overture or Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 can attest to the power and joy of classical music, and that's just about everybody.

So, if Classical Candor can expand one's awareness of classical music and bring more joy to one's life, more power to it. It's done its job.

Contact Information

Readers with polite, courteous, helpful letters may send them to pucciojj@gmail.com.